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Marty is a veteran of VBU! he’s an unique contributor as he is a vegan pilot who gets the chance to share his experience travelling to so many countries. Marty’s blog is aptly named Marty’s Flying Vegan Review. Click here to read Marty’s first contribution and HERE to read his post “Vegan, what’s your job?”, HERE for his review of Loving Hut in Pittsburgh, HERE for his review of Quoron’s Vegan Burger and HERE for his response on an article to ‘being mostly vegan’. Please welcome Marty!

The other day the cashier at Chipotle commented that she liked my shirt. I was wearing my Dr. Fuhrman shirt from the Nutritarian Festival in Aspen that I was lucky enough to stumble into a few years ago. The festival, not the shirt. It says, “Kale is the New Beef.” It’s one of my many conversation starting “tools”, and shirts, along with buttons and pins can sometimes start a conversation. I’m not going to say I’ve created many vegans a la minute but I know I’ve gotten a bunch of people thinking about their food. Like hockey, (come ON NHL), I may not have scored the goal but my pass earned an assist. I always have SOMETHING on SOMEWHERE that says either, “vegan,” or “animals,” or “food.”

The conversation went like this:

“I like your shirt.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“That’s great. I’m a vegan.”

“Oh, really, high five, I am too!”

We slap palms.

“Why don’t you say you’re vegan?”

“I think it sounds a little —” (Now in all honesty I forgot what she said. It could have been presumptuous, or pompous, preposterous or … it doesn’t matter).

“Well, I think if we all use the word more it will be a lot more common and less — sounding.”

“Hey, you’re right. I’m vegan!”

Seriously, that’s how it went.

In this day and age I think we’re at a tipping point. For a lot of things. Republican Independent Michael Bloomberg just came out admitting that there is actually something called climate change, (read Global Warming). It’s also a day and age where you almost can’t help but to hear the word “vegan” at least once. People are getting used to the word. It’s not as odd as it once was. They may even have a curious thought about it.

I just helped Jordan Wyatt of the Invercargill Vegan Society with his podcast, “Co Existing with Non-Human Animals.” My last message was this: Make One More. What I mean is, we’re about 4% of the population right now. If we all just committed in this coming year between World Vegan Days to just “Make One More” vegan, we will have doubled in size. At that point we’ll be bearing down on the magical 10% number. 10% of anything is worth sitting up and taking note of. It’s enough of a number that people who sell things take note of as a slice of market share worth catering too. It’s the start of a movement that has finally gotten a foothold and moved from the fringe looney bin to a bit part on the world stage. With it comes a modicum of power. With a modicum of power we can save a lot of lives.